Category Archives: Announcements

Introducing “SETIBlog Features”

One of the downsides of blogging is the ephemeral nature of the craft. Most successful blogs accumulate hundreds of posts over the years, but the vast majority of the content will almost always sink into obscurity within days of publication.

Of course, most blog posts are designed to be timely pieces of pithy writing–highlighting current events, expanding on the latest news headlines, responding to an ongoing controversy, and so on–so it’s no great loss when older posts are lost to time as they are pushed off the bottom of the front page.

But sometimes there are reasons for creating more enduring content–articles that take a longer look at a particular subject, or seek to educate or enlighten the readership. In other words, content that should remain of interest to readers several years from now.

Which is why, today, I have posted the first in an occasional series of “SETIBlog Features” with the slightly tongue-in-cheek title of “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Our Future Alien Overlords”. This four part series explores the oft expressed fears of making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and why, ultimately, there is no point in worrying about it. I trust you will find it interesting, even if you don’t agree with my thesis. Feel free to leave a comment with your own take on the subject.

I have another feature in the works that explores the history and relevance of the Drake Equation, including a way to plug in your own values for the terms and generate an estimate for the number of alien civilizations in the Milky Way, so stay tuned.

Rising From the Ashes

Well, it’s been a while–over three years–since I last posted on this blog, and a lot has happened in the intervening time, on the ground and up in space. Most notably, of interest to SETI, the number of confirmed exoplanets has more than double from 1,823 in July 2015 all the way to 3,867 today, and that number soars to 6,300 when you include those that are yet to be confirmed. The Golden Age of exoplanet discovery is truly upon us.

Sadly, we have yet to detect any signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, but with every year that passes, we have better tools, better techniques, and fresh new ideas on how and where to look for that one elusive signal. Undoubtedly, we are better equipped today than we have ever been, and we continue to live in hope.

I’ve long wanted to come back to this blog and start posting news and commentary on SETI and related topics again, but procrastination and distractions have always intervened. However, having recently posted an updated version of my short story collection First Contact: Alien Encounters on Amazon Kindle, I have an additional incentive to revive the blog from its long term slumber — to help sell some books!

So, if you enjoy reading the blog posts and articles on this site, please consider buying a copy to support my efforts. You never know, you might even enjoy some of the stories!

Welcome to the SETI Blog

Welcome to the SETI Blog, the home of rational, considered debate about the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and what might happen on and after that fateful day we first make contact.

My name is Mike Walker, I’m a software developer and writer living in Austin, Texas. Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by the notion that there are other intelligent beings somewhere out there in the Universe, and quite possibly somewhere within our own galaxy.

If so, what are they like? How do they think? Is their civilization more advance than ours? What could we learn from them? How do we make contact? Could we ever visit them? The questions are endless and, as yet, the answers are few.

But we sometimes forget how far we have come in just a short time. It is still less than 100 years since Sir Edwin Hubble finally presented conclusive evidence that the Universe was far larger a single galaxy, and yet today we have cataloged over a billion stars, counted more than a million individual galaxies, and have probed the farthest reaches of our vast Universe, almost back to the time of the Big Bang itself.

Continue reading Welcome to the SETI Blog